MANNED MISSION: The plan is to achieve the space mission by 2015 said ISRO chief.

India is aiming to send a manned mission into the space after the success of its first unmanned mission to the moon, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairmain G. Madhavan Nair said on Nov 23, 2008.

“The (manned) moon mission is a tough task and to achieve that our first task is to send an Indian astronaut on a manned mission to space, who will orbit the earth and return. For this, the sanction of the government has to come.

We plan to achieve this by 2015,” Nair said at a reception accorded to him during his first visit to his home town since the successful launch of the Chandrayaan-1.

“The next moon mission by the US and China is fixed for 2020 and our target is that we also should be ready by then,” Nair added.

“To achieve that, the space mission would provide the necessary boost. Another thing that is being planned is Aditya, a mission to study the solar system from the earth’s orbit,” said Nair.

The moon is 3,84,400 km away from earth and on Nov 14, 2008, India became the fourth nation to have its flag flying on the moon’s surface when Chandrayaan-1’s Moon Impact Probe (MIP), with the Tricolour painted on it, touched down.

The 35-kg payload crash-landed on the lunar surface at around 2030 hrs IST. The MIP has started sending its first signals to Chandrayaan-1.

It also contains equipment which will help scientists design a lunar land rover for the upcoming Chandrayaan-2 mission.

The MIP is slightly smaller than an average TV cabinet. Inside the MIP there is a device to constantly check it’s height as it falls. Another device checks what the air on the moon is made of. There is even a video camera to photograph the moon from close range.

The photographs taken by the MIP will help Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) decide where to land India’s first moon rover, a few years from now.

The MIP also has the Indian flag painted on it’s sides and a Sanskrit verse which means “

The MIP disconnected from Chandrayaan-1 100 km above the moon. As it fell, it kept sending information back to the satellite.

Closer to the surface, rockets were fired, to slow down it’s speed and soften the impact on landing.

After half an hour of free fall, the MIP crash-landed on the south pole of moon.

The idea to send a MIP was first mooted by former president Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.

If it weren’t for him, Chandrayaan-1 would only have orbited the moon.

Twenty-one days after launch, Chandrayaan-1, India’s maiden moon craft has it seems finally reached its home orbit. It is now in an almost 102 kilometre from the moon. The satellite’s onboard engine was fired for 58 seconds on Nov 12, 2008 at about 6.30 pm.

ISRO officials say preliminary indications are that it has reached its designated orbit. Among its first tasks in the next few days will be to release the probe that carries the Indian national flag on to the lunar surface.

After that it will begin its scientific exploration which will last two years, which includes mapping the lunar resources, preparing a three dimensional atlas of the moon and searching for water on the lunar poles.

The first image taken by Chadrayaan -1 shows the northern coast of Australia

India’s moon mission seems to be on track, now Chandrayaan-1 beams back its first pictures of earth.

The pictures were taken on October 29 by the Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) on board the spacecraft after it was switched on.

The first image taken by the TMC at 8 am on October 29 from a height of 9,000 km shows the northern coast of Australia. The second image, taken at 12.30 pm from a height of 70,000 km, shows Australia’s southern coast.

The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was yesterday shown the first pictures sent by India’s maiden unmanned scientific mission to Moon.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman G Madhavan Nair met Singh in New Delhi yesterday afternoon and briefed him on the lunar mission launched on October 22.

Nair showed Singh the first pictures taken by the TMC, one of the 11 payloads on Chandrayaan,
depicting the northern and southern coasts of Australia.

During the meeting, Singh expressed happiness on the significant milestone in space programme and congratulated Nair and his team for the successful mission.

The TMC was successfully operated on Wednesday through a series of commands issued from the Spacecraft Control Centre of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network at Bangalore.

The Indian Deep Space Network at Byalalu on the outskirts of Bangalore received the first images which were processed by Indian Space Science Data Centre.

“The images confirm excellent performance of the camera,” a top ISRO official said.

Nair briefed Singh about the launch sequence and subsequent manoeuvering of the spacecraft to reach the final lunar orbit. The health of the spacecraft is good and all operations so far have been implemented as planned, he said.

India’s first unmanned flight to the moon blasted off from Sriharikota, off the Andhra Pradesh coast, early morning on Wednesday and started to cruise around the earth in its designated orbit, minutes after a copybook liftoff.

Carrying over a billion hopes, India’s maiden lunar mission began its historic journey to the moon on Wednesday when an indigenously developed rocket placed the spacecraft into the Transfer Orbit “perfectly”.

A 44-metre-tall and 316-tonne rocket called the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV C11) carried the 1,380-kg lunar orbiter from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, , about 80 km north of Chennai, at exactly 0622 hrs IST.

The cuboid spacecraft built by the Indian Space Research Organisation – likely to be injected into Moon’s orbit on November 8 – has launched the country into the elite club that has sent missions to the moon.

Other members of the club are the US, former Soviet Union, European Space Agency, China and Japan. The US returns to lunar exploration aboard Chandrayaan-1, which is also carrying two NASA instruments in its payload.

The first four phases of the launch were 100 per cent perfect, said the scientists, and ground stations across the world – including the master control station in Bangalore – started getting signals from Chandrayaan.

Hectic activity is on at the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) at Peenya, Bangalore which will be the country’s nerve-centre for controlling Chandrayaan-I for the next two years.

The Deep Space Network (DSN) at Byalalu will join ISTRAC in tracking the spacecraft for the next six hours.

’It’s a historical moment’

Speaking minutes after the successful liftoff Chairman of the Indian Space Research Agency (ISRO) G Madhavan Nair described the moment as historic. “India has started its journey to the moon. The first leg has gone perfectly. the spacecraft has been launched into orbit,” he said.

Nair pointed out that the launch had gone off perfectly despite heavy rain in and around the spaceport for the last four days. “We’ve been fighting the odds for the last four days,” he said.

But the weather gods relented by Tuesday evening and there no rain when the launch took place in a cloudy morning sky.

Chandrayaan-1 started to orbit the earth on its geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), from which its onboard liquid apogee motor (LAM) will be fired in a series of complex manoeuvres to take it to the lunar orbit – 387,000 km from earth – on Nov 8.

It was a dream come true for about 1,000 space scientists and technologists when PSLV-C11, with the spacecraft atop, blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre of the state-run ISRO.

Within minutes of the 44.4-metre rocket roaring aloft, leaving behind an inferno in the underground inlets of the second launch pad, the mission control centre of the space station erupted with joy and excitement.

Top scientists, led by Nair, space centre director M C Dathan, associate director M Y S Prasad and others shook hands and hugged one another even as the high-security facility reverberated with clapping of hands and cheers.

Former ISRO chairmen U.R. Rao and K. Kasturirangan and space commission member Roddam Narasimaiah, who were present on the occasion, congratulated Nair and his team.